South Carolina Lawyer Blog

Recent estimates from automakers may mean that the numbers of electric cars on American roadways may skyrocket in the coming year.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), General Motors reported selling almost 3,000 of its new Volt, and Nissan estimates that it will double sales of the Leaf in the coming year.

In addition to these numbers, Honda, BMW, Ford, Mitsubishi, Mercedes, Coda and Tesla all expect to sell new electric models in the U.S. this year. But along with a boom in these new autos, comes a boom in new safety hazards.

Because of the unique risks posed by parts like the lithium-ion batteries found in electric and hybrid vehicles, the NHTSA held a technical workshop to begin hammering out official rules around monitoring, production and safety of new electric vehicle technologies. Prior to the workshop, the NHTSA released so-called “interim guidelines” for various groups—ranging from first responders and fire departments, to tow-truck operators, to owners of electric and hybrid vehicles. These guidelines were the result of investigations into the Chevy Volt by the NHTSA, after some raised concerns that the vehicle’s battery contained a defect that made it especially vulnerable to catching on fire after a crash or accident.

While the investigation did not find any defect specific to the Volt battery, the NHTSA did recognize that electric and hybrid vehicles do raise special safety concerns, if just because of the newness of their technology. The interim guidelines for vehicle owners and the general public released by the NHTSA (available here) says that damaged lithium-ion vehicle batteries as well as damaged electric or hybrid vehicles shouldn’t be stored within a structure or within 50 feet of a structure, because of post-crash fire risks. However, says the NHTSA, post-crash fire risks are common in gasoline powered vehicles as well.

In cases where an electric or hybrid is involved in an accident, drivers and bystanders—as well as law enforcement, safety and emergency workers—should assume that all battery units are fully charged and are dangerous to touch. The NHSTA also wants people to be aware that damaged battery units can leak toxic gases and chemicals, and exposed wires present a serious shock hazard.

For other information about the safety of specific models of electric or hybrid vehicles, owners should check the manuals that came with the auto.

About The Louthian Law Firm

The Louthian Law Firm, P.A., of Columbia, S.C., has been obtaining fair compensation for personal injury victims since 1959. The firm was founded by Herbert Louthian, who has more than 50 years of trial experience and is licensed to practice in all courts in South Carolina. The Louthian Law Firm focuses on personal injury cases involving medical malpractice; car, truck and motorcycle accidents; and other serious and catastrophic injuries throughout South Carolina. For a free, confidential case evaluation, contact the firm by phone at (866) 410-5656 or through its online form.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently lowered the threshold for acceptable levels of lead in children, which means that kids previously thought to have safe levels of lead in their systems may now actually have lead poisoning.

The change targets the amount of lead in the bloodstream, and shifts the official level required for a diagnosis of lead poisoning in children. Under the new policy, a child with 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood would have lead poisoning. (A deciliter, or 1/10 of a liter, is equal to just over 3 fluid ounces, and a microgram is 1/1000th of a gram.)

The CDC decision drops acceptable levels of lead by half and marks the first change to lead poisoning levels in 20 years. The CDC ruling came after official recommendations from a committee of experts in January.

Some doctors and researchers say this change could lead to many more children, especially those under 5, diagnosed with lead poisoning. One doctor, John Rosen, professor of pediatrics and head of the division of environmental sciences at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, says that the number of children with lead poisoning could go from the current level of about 250,000 to more than 1 million.

Lead poisoning causes serious problems for brain development in children. Long-term effects of poisoning include learning disabilities, behavioral and attention problems and, in the worst cases, it can cause seizures, coma and death.

Lead used to be a common part of gasoline and household paint. It is no longer present in gas and was banned from use in household paint in 1978. However, child safety experts warn, lead exposure and lead poisoning are far from concerns of the past. Houses built before the lead ban may pose a poisoning danger, particularly since lead has to be removed through a special process carried out by experts.

According to Dr. Rosen, household paint is still the leading source of lead poisoning in children. Other sources of lead may include toys, some kinds of art and craft supplies, old faucets and house pipes. Certain jobs also expose workers to higher amounts of lead, which can then raise contamination levels for their families.

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control has a helpful page about lead poisoning, with tips about lead poisoning—including a mention of which jobs may increase lead poisoning risks.

About The Louthian Law Firm

The Louthian Law Firm, P.A., of Columbia, S.C., has been obtaining fair compensation for personal injury victims since 1959. The firm was founded by Herbert Louthian, who has more than 50 years of trial experience and is licensed to practice in all courts in South Carolina. The Louthian Law Firm handles personal injury cases involving medical malpractice; car, truck and motorcycle accidents; and other serious and catastrophic injuries throughout South Carolina. For a free, confidential case evaluation, contact the firm by phone at (866) 410-5656 or through its online contact form

Columbia, S.C., May 18, 2012 -- South Carolina motorcycle accident lawyer Bert Louthian said May's National Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month is a good time to raise awareness among Palmetto State motorists that motorcycles have the same rights and privileges as any other vehicle on the road.

“It's a time when motorcycle activity starts to pick up across our state, and it’s important to remind everyone that a large number of South Carolina motorcycle accidents are caused by the other vehicle involved in the wreck,” said Louthian, a partner of the Columbia personal injury firm, Louthian Law Firm, P.A.

“Too often, drivers don’t pay enough attention to the motorcycle on the road with them – or else they fail to respect the bike’s presence – and the result is a wreck that can be catastrophic for the motorcycle rider and, in many cases, their passenger,” Louthian said.

“Motorcycle safety is a two-way street. Motorcyclists should wear helmets at all times and practice defensive driving. This month, we also need to make sure that car, bus and truck drivers know that they have a duty as well. They must share the road responsibly with their two-wheeled counterparts.”

Louthian pointed out that motorcyclist fatalities increased nationwide in 2010 to 4,502, which was 14 percent of total highway fatalities for the year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The increase in fatalities renewed a 13-year trend that had been interrupted by a one-year decline in fatal motorcycle accidents in 2009.

In South Carolina, the numbers have turned grim as well. According to the S.C. Department of Public Safety, 102 motorcycle riders died on state roads in 2011, marking an increase from 82 the year before. So far in 2012, there have been 36 motorcyclist traffic deaths, the SCDPS says.

“Because a motorcyclist lacks protection and is significantly outweighed by the other vehicle, the motorcycle rider can suffer severe injuries in a collision, including traumatic brain injury, paralysis, serious scarring or – in the worst cases – death,” Louthian said. “That’s why it’s so important for other drivers to be on alert when motorcycles are present on the road.”

Louthian says motor vehicle drivers can help to improve motorcycle safety by taking steps that include:

• Checking their rearview mirrors and blind spots when they know a motorcycle is nearby. This can avoid accidents caused by a driver making a left turn in front of the motorcycle, Louthian said.


• Leaving extra travel distance behind a motorcycle. This can avoid rear-end collisions, the Columbia personal injury attorney said. Often, a motorcyclist may need to stop quickly or change direction because of potholes, puddles, ice or other obstructions, he noted. He suggested a cushion of 3-4 seconds.


• Never try to share a lane with a motorcycle. For the same reason a car driver wouldn’t share a lane with another car, they shouldn’t do so with a motorcycle, Louthian said. The motorcycle should be treated as another vehicle at all times.

When motorcyclists are injured in a collision that is caused by another driver, it’s important for them to contact an experienced South Carolina motorcycle accident attorney, Louthian added.

Too often, he said, the insurance company for the other driver will try to put blame for the accident on the motorcyclist or contend that the motorcycle rider’s injuries could have been lessened if they had been safer. The insurer is simply out to minimize its losses, he said.

“The bottom line is that when other motorists fail to see bikers or don’t take the care they should to avoid a crash, they have failed their duty,” Louthian said. “They need to be held accountable, and the victims of their negligence need to be fully and fairly compensated.”

About The Louthian Law Firm

The Louthian Law Firm, P.A., of Columbia, S.C., has been obtaining fair compensation for personal injury victims since 1959. The firm was founded by Herbert Louthian, who has more than 50 years of trial experience and is licensed to practice in all courts in South Carolina. The Louthian Law Firm focuses on personal injury cases involving medical malpractice; car, truck and motorcycle accidents; and other serious and catastrophic injuries throughout South Carolina. For a free, confidential case evaluation, contact the firm by phone at (866) 410-5656 or through its online form.

Thousands of drivers in the U.S. have their actions tracked every time they get behind the wheel—and very few of us are even aware of it. The reason? The event data recorder (EDR) has become an increasingly common device in automobiles. The device records information about a vehicle’s operation and details about driver behaviors in a way that is similar to the “black box” found in many airplanes.

Both safety and consumer rights activists are concerned about use and regulation of the devices. Initially, the EDR was intended to help automakers gather data about performance of their vehicles. However, some consumer rights advocates say, that is a far cry from how the EDR is being used today. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), EDRs are standard in about 85 percent of new vehicles. Yet many drivers are unaware that the devices even exist—and that they are constantly gathering data about what people are doing behind the wheel.

A recent article in Spectrum, a trade magazine for electrical engineers, called EDRs an “open secret,” saying that while many drivers are unaware of their existence, EDRs are used by law enforcement and the insurance industry on an increasingly regular basis. The article also discusses pending legislation, called “Mariah’s Act,”which would make EDRs standard equipment in all vehicles, beginning in 2015. According to the article, Mariah’s Act also has new requirements about the amount and type of data the EDR needs to gather—data that may be aimed at drivers, rather than their vehicles.

Many experts agree that the debate about EDRs focuses around issues of who has access to an auto’s data—and whether drivers can control that access. The National Motorists Association, for example, advocates for drivers to have primary control over EDR information and wants Mariah’s Act amended to prohibit law enforcement, insurers and others from accessing that information without a driver’s consent.

Still others, like California prosecutor Charles G. Gillingham, say that drivers give up any special right to the info on their EDR once they start driving on public lands. So far, only 13 states have weighed in on the EDR debate. South Carolina is not one of those states. The Supreme Court has yet to decide any cases that specifically involve EDRs, but the court recently struck down the use of data gathered from a GPS device which was placed on a suspect’s car without that person’s consent and without a warrant.

The debate over EDRs is far from over, and Mariah’s Act is still under consideration by Congress. In the meantime, it is important for all drivers to be aware of these issues and to be aware of whether their vehicle—or a vehicle they are purchasing—has an EDR. If you aren’t already aware of the status of your vehicle, you can use information on the National Motorists Association website to find out if your vehicle might have an EDR.

About The Louthian Law Firm

The Louthian Law Firm, P.A., of Columbia, S.C., has been obtaining fair compensation for personal injury victims since 1959. The firm was founded by Herbert Louthian, who has more than 50 years of trial experience and is licensed to practice in all courts in South Carolina. In addition to claims involvingcar, truck and motorcycle accidents, the Louthian Law Firm also handles whistleblower claims, sexual harassment, personal injury cases;; and other serious and catastrophic injuries throughout South Carolina. For a free, confidential case evaluation, contact the firm by phone at (866) 410-5656 or through its online contact form.

According to a new report from the National Institutes of Health, whether someone treated for heart failure ends up being readmitted to a hospital is more closely tied to income level and community than to how sick they are or how well a hospital treats patients.

The research, which was presented to the American Heart Association, shows that the percentage of patients who are readmitted because of heart failure varies by region. Some regions had rates as low as 10 percent, and others were as high as 32 percent.

After studying records from over 3,000 hospitals and 1 million patients, researchers found that the availability of doctors or hospital beds, a patient’s income level and their ethnicity were more strongly connected to higher rates of readmission than any other factors—including how sick a patient was or how well the hospital cared for patients.

These findings are a concern for some in the medical community, since hospitals with high readmission rates will face a steep penalty from the government—in the form of reduced Medicare payments—beginning next year.

Some hospital advocates say that the best option, rather than cutting payments, may be to look to the communities around hospitals with high readmission rates, since they are often hospitals which provide care to low-income and other at-risk patients. And because of recent hits to the economy and employment rates, concerns about readmissions and poverty rates aren’t just for hospitals and patients in places like New York, Chicago or Detroit.

What all this may mean for the quality of health care—or readmission rates—in South Carolina is still uncertain. Staff at the Good Neighbor Clinic estimate that there are 30,000 uninsured and poor patients in Beaufort County alone. This, combined with the recent findings linking high poverty levels to higher rates of readmission, should cause some worry for both patients and doctors.

About The Louthian Law Firm

The Louthian Law Firm, P.A., of Columbia, S.C., has been obtaining fair compensation for personal injury victims since 1959. The firm was founded by Herbert Louthian, who has more than 50 years of trial experience and is licensed to practice in all courts in South Carolina. In addition to claims involving healthcare negligence, the Louthian Law Firm also handles whistleblower claims, sexual harassment, personal injury cases; car, truck and motorcycle accidents; and other serious and catastrophic injuries throughout South Carolina. For a free, confidential case evaluation, contact the firm by phone at (866) 410-5656 or through its online contact form.

A recent article in The State mentions two separate accidents along I-20 during the first weekend in May, which claimed the lives of three people. As the article mentions, none of the three who died were wearing seatbelts. What the article doesn’t mention is that a total of 10 people died on South Carolina roads that weekend—and none of them were wearing seatbelts.

According to the South Carolina Department of Public Safety (SCDPS), which keeps records of the numbers and kinds of accidents and deaths that occur on SC roadways, three of the 10 deaths were in a category where seatbelts are “not applicable,” a classification which includes pedestrians, cyclists and those on motorcycles.

However, the other seven people who died were motorists and passengers who were not buckled up at the time of the crash, investigators say. Also according to the most recent SCDPS figures, 271 people have died so far in 2012 on South Carolina roads. Among those, 121 were people who should have been wearing seatbelts. This figure becomes even more startling when you just focus on the number of people, with access to seatbelts in their vehicles, who have died in accidents this year. Out of the total deaths this year, 188 have been people in autos equipped with seatbelts. And, among this group, those without seatbelts account for 64 percent of all deaths.

South Carolina’s seatbelt law has long made it mandatory for every driver and passenger to buckle up (if in a vehicle with access to seatbelts) while on State and public roadways. For a number of years, however, the seatbelt law didn’t have what is called ‘primary enforcement,’ which meant that police officers couldn’t pull over anyone older than 17 just because they were not wearing a seatbelt. Officers could issue seatbelt tickets only if they stopped a vehicle for another reason first. However, SC’s seatbelt policies got tougher in December of 2005, giving officers the ability to use primary enforcement for seatbelt use. The tougher, current version of the state’s seatbelt policy now allows officers to pull over any vehicle if any person in that vehicle seems not buckled up.

About The Louthian Law Firm

The Louthian Law Firm, P.A., of Columbia, S.C., has been obtaining fair compensation for personal injury victims since 1959. The firm was founded by Herbert Louthian, who has more than 50 years of trial experience and is licensed to practice in all courts in South Carolina. The Louthian Law Firm handles personal injury cases involving medical malpractice; car, truck and motorcycle accidents; and other serious and catastrophic injuries throughout South Carolina. For a free, confidential case evaluation, contact the firm by phone at (866) 410-5656 or through its online contact form.

It seems the saying “location, location, location” may be important to remember in more contexts than real estate, according to the findings of a few recent health studies. One of the most significant studies focused on survival rates for heart attacks across the U.S.

The study, led by researchers at Yale University, looked at more than 500 hospitals across the country and compared hospital policies and practices with patient survival rates. Researchers found that survival rates doubled at hospitals which shared five common practices.

These practices centered largely on staffing and staff communication, with things like better teamwork among doctors and nurses or monthly meetings between paramedics and doctors positively impacting patients’ likelihood of surviving heart attacks. Unfortunately, according to their findings, fewer than 10 percent of the hospitals used even four of the five life-saving practices.

In addition to the Yale study, the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association recently issued a recommendation based upon the effects of hospital choice on survival rates for stroke victims. According to the two groups, people who are diagnosed as suffering from aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage, a kind of stroke which includes bleeding in the brain, should be admitted to hospitals which treat at least 35 of those cases a year. Their recommendation targets emergency room staff, who are often the first to diagnose patients with these kinds of bleeding strokes, saying that hospitals which don’t see many of these cases should immediately transfer patients to locations that do. Researchers found that at so-called ‘high-density’ hospitals, there were 12 percent fewer deaths than at hospitals that treated bleeding strokes less often. Patients treated at high-density hospitals may also have fewer complications in their recoveries, experts say.

Both of these reports shed important light on how hospital staffing and expertise among hospital workers affect a patient’s ability to access life-saving care—and how not all hospitals, not all locations, are created equal. Unfortunately, not all patients are in a position to know how to choose or even be able to choose the right place for treatment, especially in an emergency situation. Often, it’s left to family members to act as advocates for a loved one. It’s important to think about your medical wishes and to talk about them with your family. It’s also important to remember to take the time to do this before a medical emergency happens—before a loved one’s survival is on the line.

About The Louthian Law Firm

The Louthian Law Firm, P.A., of Columbia, S.C., has been obtaining fair compensation for personal injury victims since 1959. The firm was founded by Herbert Louthian, who has more than 50 years of trial experience and is licensed to practice in all courts in South Carolina. The Louthian Law Firm handles personal injury cases involving medical malpractice; car, truck and motorcycle accidents; and other serious and catastrophic injuries throughout South Carolina. For a free, confidential case evaluation, contact the firm by phone at (866) 410-5656 or through its online contact form

Over the course of the last four years, the University of South Carolina (USC) has paid over $175,000 in fines because of health and safety violations involving asbestos—including an incident where at least one student was potentially exposed to the cancer-causing substance.

A recent article in The State outlines USC’s checkered history with the dangerous material—one that is often found in building materials made and used prior to the late 1980s, when the link between asbestos and certain types of illness and lung cancer caused the government to ban its use.

These most recent fines come on the heels of work carried out at three student housing complexes, a medical school building, a building at the USC-Lancaster campus, as well as Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia. According to records dug up by The State’s investigation, USC has been cited at least five times since 2008 by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC).

The dangers of asbestos—the brand name for a product that is actually a blend of six different minerals—has been well documented by both medical and environmental experts, since before the official 1989 ban by the Environmental Protection Agency. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in coordination with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, maintains an online hub for information about asbestos, related health risks, and who to contact to detect and remove asbestos properly.

This isn’t the first time the University has run across fines and other penalties for asbestos troubles. According to various state records and news reports, USC’s troubles began almost 10 years ago, with DHEC citations for work done on the Spartanburg campus.

What seems most troubling—aside from the enormous cost of these fines—is the tremendous amount of danger students and workers at USC faced, and how very unnecessary that risk truly is.

About The Louthian Law Firm

The Louthian Law Firm, P.A., of Columbia, S.C., has been obtaining fair compensation for personal injury victims since 1959. The firm was founded by Herbert Louthian, who has more than 50 years of trial experience and is licensed to practice in all courts in South Carolina. The Louthian Law Firm handles personal injury cases involving medical malpractice; car, truck and motorcycle accidents; and other serious and catastrophic injuries throughout South Carolina. For a free, confidential case evaluation, contact the firm by phone at (866) 410-5656 or through its online contact form.

A recent study that looked at more than 19,000 operations found that the costs of medical care in the U.S. aren’t at all uniform—for example, you could be charged anywhere from $1,500 to $180,000 for the same type of surgery.

The study, carried out by researchers in California, compared the costs of treating appendicitis—which involves removing a person’s appendix through a surgical procedure called an “appendectomy.” The researchers looked at the cases of people between the ages of 18 and 59 who were hospitalized for three days or less and whose cases were classified as “uncomplicated.”

The average bill for treatment was about $34,000, but researchers also came across a bill that totaled $182,955. Some of the differences in billing, the study found, happen because of the kind of hospital (public or for-profit, etc.) and how ill the patient is. For example, public hospitals tended to have lower costs on their bills than for-profit hospitals, the study found.

The biggest bill was for a woman undergoing cancer treatment who had her appendix removed—although her bill didn’t show any charges for cancer treatments. However, differences in hospital type and illness don’t explain all of the costs and differences in bills, researchers and medical experts say.

About 32 percent of the differences between bills remain unexplained, according to the study. Experts and patient advocates who commented on the study also pointed to the impact of insurance, saying that some well-insured patients are insulated from many kinds of charges, while under- or un-insured patients are given heftier bills—and often without understanding what hospitals expect them to pay for.

Even among insured patients, the type or brand of insurance can really affect the cost that ends up on your final bill. According to one healthcare advocate, costs within the same state, for the same type of procedure, can be three to six times as much—depending almost entirely upon insurance.

Along with questioning the impact of insurance companies, healthcare experts also say that expecting patients to comparison shop between hospitals is unrealistic—particularly for emergency care. Researchers also said their study looked at the amount that patients were charged, not at how hospitals were actually paid. Because hospitals can receive payments from insurance companies, employers, the government and other groups (like drug companies), some of the costs that get passed on to patients may have been affected by these other sources of income. But how this income affects a patient’s bill still isn’t clear.

Some advocates say that looking at how hospitals, insurance companies and other groups give doctors and administrators payments and other kinds of bonuses or “incentives” for certain kinds of medical care may help shed light on how a hospital bill actually gets made—and how costs get passed to patients.

About The Louthian Law Firm

The Louthian Law Firm, P.A., of Columbia, S.C., has been obtaining fair compensation for personal injury victims since 1959. The firm was founded by Herbert Louthian, who has more than 50 years of trial experience and is licensed to practice in all courts in South Carolina. The Louthian Law Firm handles personal injury cases involving medical malpractice; car, truck and motorcycle accidents; and other serious and catastrophic injuries throughout South Carolina. For a free, confidential case evaluation, contact the firm by phone at (866) 410-5656 or through its online contact form

Columbia, S.C., April 24, 2012 -- South Carolina nursing home abuse and neglect attorney Bert Louthian today hailed a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) program launched recently to combat the use of antipsychotic medications with nursing home residents.

“The excessive and inappropriate use of antipsychotic drugs in nursing homes and other elderly care situations is a longstanding problem, and it’s good to see the federal government’s primary medical care program for the elderly take steps to put an end to this kind of abuse,” said Louthian, a partner in the South Carolina personal injury firm, Louthian Law Firm, P.A., which is based in Columbia.

The “National Initiative to Improve Behavioral Health & Reduce the Use of Antipsychotic Medications in Nursing Home Residents” is meant to raise awareness of antipsychotic misuse, improve regulatory oversight and train nursing home workers on non-drug treatments for aggressive and agitated dementia behaviors, according to McKnight’s Long-Term Care News & Assisted Living online journal.

A 2011 audit by the CMS found that thousands of elderly nursing home residents suffering from dementia were given powerful antipsychotic drugs as a means of controlling aggressive behavior symptomatic of dementia, the New York Times reported.

The auditors said 83 percent of antipsychotic drugs prescribed for elderly nursing home residents were for uses not approved by federal regulators, and 88 percent were to treat patients with dementia, for whom the drugs can be lethal, the newspaper said.

“Applying medication that is known to be improper, let alone potentially lethal, is nothing less than abuse of the elderly,” Louthian said. “This practice, which is sometimes called ‘chemical restraint,’ needs to stop.”

Louthian’s law firm investigates elderly and nursing home patient neglect or abuse across South Carolina.

“Family members and others connected to nursing home patients need to help them by looking out for their welfare and asking questions about the medications they are receiving,” Louthian said.

“If a person thinks an elderly patient is being treated incorrectly, through improper medication or other means, they should contact an experienced nursing home abuse and neglect lawyer to learn about their legal options.”

About The Louthian Law Firm

The Louthian Law Firm, P.A., of Columbia, S.C., has been obtaining fair compensation for personal injury victims since 1959. The firm was founded by Herbert Louthian, who has more than 50 years of trial experience and is licensed to practice in all courts in South Carolina. In addition to claims involving nursing home abuse, the Louthian Law Firm also handles whistleblower claims, sexual harassment, personal injury cases involving medical malpractice; car, truck and motorcycle accidents; and other serious and catastrophic injuries throughout South Carolina. For a free, confidential case evaluation, contact the firm by phone at (866) 410-5656 or through its online contact form.